Philosophy

This knowledge is the king of education, the
most secret of all secrets. It is the purest knowledge, and because
it gives direct perception of the self by realization, it is the perfection
of religion. It is everlasting, and it is joyfully performed.

Bhagavad-gita As It IsSrimad BhagavatamKrsna: The Supreme Personality
of GodheadThe Nectar of Devotion: The
Complete Science of Bhakti-YogaSri Caitanya CaritamrtaScience of Self RealizationLife Comes from LifeBrahma SamhitaSri IsopanisadThese books and others are available
from The Bhaktivedanta Book Trust.

His Divine Grace A.C.
Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, Founder Acarya of the International
Society for Krishna Consciousness, established the Bhaktivedanta
Institute to promote scientific inquiry into the cause and meaning of
life by utilizing the teachings of the ancient Vedic texts. This approach
to knowledge is called the Descending Method, whereas empirical analysis
is known as the Ascending Method. In this way modern science tries
to prove its theories by empirical observation using limited sensory faculties
and scanty physical evidence rather than information given by higher forms
of intelligence. This fundamental polarity between scientists' and
religionists' definitions of acceptable evidence inhibits effective communication,
since each is using a different set of criteria to establish conclusions.
What follows is a brief overview of Srila Prabhupada's perspective on modern
science and philosophy.

His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada founded both
the International Society for Krishna Consciousness and its Science
Studies Branch called the Bhaktivedanta Institute. He produced more
than 80 books on Eastern Philosophy and founded the Bhaktivedanta Book
Trust to publish and distribute this literature.

Syamasundara dasa: Hegel attempted to establish the relationship
between concrete realities. Isolated facts, or moments, as he calls
them, can never constitute the truth because the truth is the whole, an
integrated unity that is organic and dynamic.

Srila Prabhupada: Just by analyzing ourselves, we can understand
that I, the soul, am existing and that my bodily features are changing.
When things change, we call them material. The spirit soul exists
in all conditions, and that is the difference between spirit and matter.

Syamasundara dasa: Moments, factors in the organic whole,
progress in an evolutionary way according to the course set by reason,
which Hegel calls the Welt Geist, the World Spirit.

Srila Prabhupada: That World Spirit is a person. Unless you accept
a personal God, there is no question of reason. The reason guiding
everything in the universe is explained in Bhagavad-gita: mayadhyaksena
prakrtih. "This material nature is working under My direction."
(Bg. 9.10) Direction means reason; therefore as soon as you
speak of reason, you must accept the Supreme Person who is directing everything
according to His supreme reason.

Beyond Illusion and Doubt:
A Vedic Perspective on Western PhilosophyAbridged version of Dialectic SpiritualismORDER

Excerpt from: Beyond Illusion and Doubt (copyright
1999 BBT)

Disciple: Darwin tried to show how the origin of living species
could be fully explained by the purely mechanical, unplanned action of
natural forces. By the process he called "natural selection," all the higher,
complex forms of life gradually evolved from more primitive and rudimentary
ones.....They try to trace the origin by means of excavation. And
they have found that gradually through the years the animal forms are evolving
toward increasingly more complex and specialized forms.....In that process
many species, like the dinosaurs appeared, flourished, and then disappeared
forever, became extinct. Eventually primitive apelike creatures appeared,
and from them man gradually developed.

Srila Prabhupada: Is the theory that the human body comes from
the monkeys?

Disciple: Humans and monkeys are related.

Srila Prabhupada: Related? Everything is related……both are
now existing. Similarly, we say that at the time the evolutionists
say life began, there were human beings existing.

Disciple: They find no evidence for that.

Srila Prabhupada: Why no evidence?

Disciple: In the ground. By excavation. They find no
evidence in the ground.

Srila Prabhupada: Is the ground the only evidence? Is there
no other evidence?...

Disciple: It appears that in certain layers of earth there are
remains of apelike men --

Srila Prabhupada: We say that we all come from God, the same ancestor,
the same father.

Disciple: But surely if men were living millions of years ago,
they would have left evidence, tangible evidence, behind them. I could
see their remains.

Srila Prabhupada: So I say that in advanced human societies bodies
are burned after death, cremated. So where does your excavator get
his bones?

Disciple: But Darwin says there are many species, like dinosaurs,
that are seen to be extinct.

Srila Prabhupada: What has he seen? He is not so powerful
that he can see everywhere or everything. His power to see is limited,
and by that limited power he cannot conclude that one species is extinct.
That is not possible. No real scientist will accept that. After,
all the senses by which you gather knowledge are limited, so how can you
say this is finished or that is extinct? You cannot see. You
cannot search out. The earth's circumference is twenty-five thousand
miles; have you searched through all the layers of rock and soil over the
whole earth? Have you excavated all those places?

Disciple: No.

Srila Prabhupada: There our first charge against Darwin is this:
He says there were no human beings millions of years ago. That is
not a fact. We now see human beings existing along with all other species,
and it should be concluded that this situation always existed. Human life
has always been there. Darwin cannot prove that there was no human
life millions of years ago.